Talk:Blake Crouch

Book Genres

I read and enjoy mainly Science Fiction and recently read "Dark Matter" by Blake Crouch, a science fiction novel. I enjoyed it enough that I came to Wikipedia to peruse Blake's bibliography. I soon found that Blake writes in multiple genres and wished that his Wikipedia page defined the genre of each book. Since it did not define the genre of each book (as many book bibliographies on Wikipedia do), I decided to help the community and add genres to each book. After some research I did so.

Within 20 minutes @Revirvlkodlaku deleted all of my changes with the vague comment "Removed nonstandard genre mentions in bibliography". I would think that "Science Fiction" was a pretty standard genre and the Wikipedia page for "Dark Matter" has the genre "Science Fiction Thriller". The Wikipedia page for "The Wayward Pines Trilogy" has three genres listed: Mystery, Thriller, and Science fiction so I added all three to that series.

So, @Revirvlkodlaku, would you please explain more clearly why you deleted my edits? Also, if Wikipedia has a list of standard book genres (I looked and couldn't find one) would you mind linking to it?

Thanks, rlmccall (talk) 03:54, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Hi @rlmccall, I'll make two points in response to your comment:

1. I've edited quite a few author pages, and if my memory serves me, none of them included genres with each bibliographic entry. This is what I meant by "nonstandard"—not that the genres themselves are nonstandard, but their inclusion in a bibliographic list is.

2. Hypothetically speaking, if you did want to include genres with each bibliographic entry, something which I do not recommend—you would also have to provide a reference for each one. This is possibly the larger point in this discussion—while you may be accurate in determining the genre of a particular book, in order for this to be admissible on Wikipedia, it must be properly sourced, otherwise it constitutes original research.

3. I'll actually make a third point—this one related to the style in which you have written your complaint. The talk page of any given Wikipedia doesn't consist of administrators who arbitrate disputes between members, so it doesn't make sense to formulate your issue as a complaint against me. It is far more productive—and collegial—to just address me directly, omitting the plaintive tone, and be ready for a discussion that may or may not go the way you would like it to. We are all doing the same thing on this platform—trying to make it as good as it can be. Hope that makes sense. Cheers! Revirvlkodlaku (talk) 04:55, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

@Revirvlkodlaku, thanks for the clarification!

I was recently looking at the Arthur Conan Doyle bibliography and his novel section has a "series or genre" column, with entries such as "Historical fiction" or "Romance" associated with each book title. With that in mind, I approached this page. Many bibliography pages have books broken out into sections by genre, but I felt that breaking a list of 10 books and 2 series into 3 or 4 different sections would look messy.

You clearly have much, much more experience updating Wikipedia, so I will defer to your judgement in this.

Thanks again! rlmccall (talk) 06:19, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

@rlmccall, I see what you mean about the Arthur Conan Doyle article, but of course, that page is dedicated to his bibliography, has a full table, etc., so there's much more room to get creative with different columns and their content. Anyway, you've said more or less that in your comment, so it sounds like we're on the same page. Thanks for the civil response, and happy editing! Revirvlkodlaku (talk) 12:51, 24 August 2023 (UTC)